Does anyone care, I mean really care, about interns? They've been complaining recently about being exploited, underpaid (if paid at all), and generally treated as despised dogsbodies.

There is even a website called Interns Anonymous, full of interns complaining about being exploited, underpaid, treated as dogsbodies, etc. On IA, some of the whinges are so lengthy and self-pitying one can't help but wonder if they might have got on a little better if they'd poured all that energy into the internship.

Too cruel? Probably. One BBC report says that anything between three-12 months of work experience is required for certain professions, 90% of which is unpaid, and which 60% of interns say is not beneficial. However, while some of these interns may have a genuine complaint, on the whole, diddums. After all, however badly treated, underpaid and undervalued they feel, where starting off in the workplace is concerned, this is hardly the road less travelled.

Didn't most of us go through this kind of thing in our early years of work? It might not have been called an "internship", but the same rules applied – grovel about, feel broke and overworked, secretly resent everybody, consider yourself an overlooked genius, go back to horrid room that smells of cat wee and despair, eat budget crisps for supper, weep, bed.

I remember in the music press, quite a few of we lowly freelancers divided the working week into listening to records and selling them to survive, sometimes skipping the tedious listening part. What I don't remember is people dripping about, crying: "Boo hoo – I'm being exploited!" Time was, whichever field you happened to be in, this sort of thing was considered perfectly normal. Intern, schmintern, it was really about paying your dues. Being young.

Maybe the new generation don't realise this – they think intern-abuse, the brutal siphoning off of youth and energy by ruthless tea-demanding overlords, is a terrible new thing that just happened, probably because of the economy. They're seething at the photocopier (or in front of their laptop in Caffé Nero, as unpaid "virtual interns"), blaming Gordon Brown. Perhaps they could take comfort in the fact that interns always got the brown smelly end of the stick. If anything has changed, it is that there are now far fewer opportunities for people who want to be treated quite this badly.

There lies the real scandal of internships – they are gold dust, and therefore pretty much exclusive to the well off. Which explains why the charity Pilotlight was able to, rather cleverly, auction off highly lucrative charity lots of various internships (media, commerce, banking) for thousands a pop. How many parents of working-class children were sticking their hands up for those babies? Admittedly, I wasn't there, but I'm going to hazard a guess anyway – none.

Indeed, the vast majority of internships are only doable by middle-class children with what are politely termed "connections', or at least financial support, and some form of parental roof over their heads. And while no one begrudges these kids, with their poorer contemporaries probably prepared to chew their own arms off at the elbow for a tenth of their opportunities, one draws the line at feeling sorry for them.

If anything, one feels rather bemused by them. We seem to have bred a new generation who sincerely expect the world of work to be Hollyoaks crossed with The Apprentice. Non-stop glamour, excitement, great salary, posh flat, cars, all arriving pretty much instantly. Little wonder that these spoiled, deluded innocents find the unwritten laws of the internship, the traditional exchange of slave labour for the holy grail of experience, a strange and chilling concept.

My advice to them is stop whingeing to Interns Anonymous ("My name is Dave, and I'm an intern"), realise it's a short-term lesson in humiliation, and, like previous generations, suck it up. In short, try to be a bit more anonymous.

Why Lady GaGa's notoriety is a storm in a tea cup

Anybody else feeling somewhat "over" Lady GaGa and her omnipresent crockery? I first decided it might be quite pleasant to throttle her when I saw her on the Jonathan Ross show sipping out of her tea cup, answering questions in a droning monosyllabic fashion reminiscent of vacuum cleaners on cheap carpet. Then followed all that "he/she?" stuff that made one feel rather sorry for Ms GaGa. Then it was all downhill again as she appeared at the Brits dressed as little-known superhero "Doily Sperm Girl".

Worse, she teetered up to the stage faffing around with that bloody teacup again. Come on. I've been to the Brits enough times to know that the booze flows, but the cranberry infusions are not so forthcoming. So, who had the teapot? Then again, who cares?

Listening to her dreary repetitive techno headbanging (two half-decent frugs on an album do not a dancefloor classic make), one suspects that Lady GaGa may be a Wizard of Oz artist – rip away the costumes, dry ice, and general hullabaloo and there's very little there. So while the nation may be "going gaga", I don't think I'll be bothering with her tour. Let's just say she's not my cup of tea.

Lara Croft Way? You must be kidding

There's been more uproar about children being sexualised and bombarded by images that are ageing them prematurely, resulting in mini-adults – little girls in boob tubes, little boys acting "macho".

So what are we seeing here: a kind of "psychocultural progeria" (the disease that prematurely ages children) – only in this case it is society not genetics making children grow up far too soon? Sounds about right. The "sexy" clothes in childswear departments make an "Ann Summers for tots" range look scarily imminent, and who could forget the shiversome sight of little Suri Cruise in high heels?

For me, there has always seemed a direct correlation between children aping "older" and adults aping "younger". Put bluntly, if we want our children to act their age, then perhaps so should we. Only last week, a public vote resulted in part of the new ring road in Derby being named Lara Croft Way. Hang on, you think, aren't roads usually named after the likes of war heroes, poets or scientists? While Lara was dreamt up by Core Design in Derby, it might have been classier to honour the inventor rather than the fictional gaming babe. Naff, or what?

Indeed, much as we fret about children being "too adult", perhaps part of the problem is that certain grown-ups aren't adult enough, resulting in the kind of widespread infantilisation that produces Lara Croft Way.

If this were a sci-fi novel, the Prematurely Aged and the Young Forever would eventually end up meeting in the middle in one big gloopy generational mess. Until then, infantilisation reigns among adults… and then you wonder where all those boob-tubed nine-year-olds are coming from?